Chương Chương 37 · BOOK III CHAPTER XI

Time went on and the cabin was quietly nearing completion. The roof of

poles was in place. It only remained to cover it with moss and

thawed-out earth to make it our future home. I think these were the

happiest days I spent in the North. We were such a united trio. Each was

eager to do more than the other, and we vied in little acts of mutual

consideration.

Once again I congratulated myself on my partners. Jim, though sometimes

bellicosely evangelical, was the soul of kindly goodness, cheerfulness

and patience. It was refreshing to know among so many sin-calloused men

one who always rang true, true as the gold in the pan. As for the

Prodigal, he was a Prince. I often thought that God at the birth of him

must have reached out to the sunshine and crammed a mighty handful of it

into the boy. Surely it is better than all the riches in the world to

have a temperament of eternal cheer.

As for me, I have ever been at the mercy of my moods, easily elated,

quickly cast down. I have always been abnormally sensitive, affected by

sunshine and by shadows, vacillating, intense in my feelings. I was

truly happy in those days, finding time in the long evenings to think of

the scenes of stress and sorrow I had witnessed, reconstructing the

past, and having importune me again and again the many characters in my

life drama.

Always and always I saw the Girl, elusively sweet, almost unreal, a

thing to enshrine in that ideal alcove of our hearts we keep for our

saints. (And God help us always to keep shining there a great light.)

Many others importuned me: Pinklove, Globstock, Pondersby, Marks, old

Wilovich, all dead; Bullhammer, the Jam-wagon, Mosher, the Winklesteins,

plunged in the vortex of the gold-born city; and lastly, looming over

all, dark and ominous, the handsome, bold, sinister face of Locasto.

Well, maybe I would never see any of them again.

Yet more and more my dream hours were jealously consecrated to Berna.

How ineffably sweet were they! How full of delicious imaginings! How

pregnant of high hope! O, I was born to love, I think, and I never loved

but one. This story of my life is the story of Berna. It is a thing of

words and words and words, yet every word is Berna, Berna. Feel the

heartache behind it all. Read between the lines, Berna, Berna.

Often in the evenings we went to the Forks, which was a lively place

indeed. Here was all the recklessness and revel of Dawson on a smaller

scale, and infinitely more gross. Here were the dance-hall girls, not

the dazzling creatures in diamonds and Paris gowns, the belles of the

Monte Carlo and the Tivoli, but drabs self-convicted by their coarse,

puffy faces. Here the men, fresh from their day's work, the mud of the

claim hardly dry on their boot-tops, were buying wine with nuggets they

had filched from sluice-box, dump and drift.

There was wholesale robbery going on in the gold-camp. On many claims

where the owners were known to be unsuspicious, men would work for small

wages because of the gold they were able to filch. On the other hand,

many of the operators were paying their men in trade-dust valued at

sixteen dollars an ounce, yet so adulterated with black sand as to be

really worth about fourteen. All these things contributed to the low

morale of the camp. Easy come, easy go with money, a wild intoxication

of success in the air; gold gouged in glittering heaps from the ground

during the day, and at night squandered in a carnival of lust and sin.

The Prodigal was always "snooping" around and gleaning information from

most mysterious sources. One evening he came to us.

"Boys, get ready, quick. There's a rumour of a stampede for a new creek,

Ophir Creek they call it, away on the other side of the divide

somewhere. A prospector went down ten feet and got fifty-cent dirt.

We've got to get in on this. There's a mob coming from Dawson, but we'll

get there before the rush."

Quickly we got together blankets and a little grub, and, keeping out of

sight, we crawled up the hill under cover of the brush. Soon we came to

a place from which we could command a full view of the valley. Here we

lay down, awaiting developments.

It was at the hour of dusk. Scarfs of smoke wavered over the cabins down

in the valley. On the far slope of Eldorado I saw a hawk soar upwards.

Surely a man was moving amid the brush, two men, a dozen men, moving in

single file very stealthily. I pointed them out.

"It's the stampede," whispered Jim. "We've got to get on to the trail of

that crowd. Travel like blazes. We can cut them off at the head of the

valley."

So we struck into the stampede gait, a wild, jolting, desperate pace,

that made the wind pant in our lungs like bellows, and jarred our bones

in their sockets. Through brush and scrub timber we burst. Thorny vines

tore at us detainingly, swampy niggerheads impeded us; but the

excitement of the stampede was in our blood, and we plunged down

gulches, floundered over marshes, climbed steep ridges and crashed

through dense masses of underwood.

"Throw away your blankets, boys," said the Prodigal. "Just keep a little

grub. Eldorado was staked on a stampede. Maybe we're in on another

Eldorado. We must connect with that bunch if we break our necks."

It was hours after when we overtook them, about a dozen men, all in the

maddest hurry, and casting behind them glances of furtive apprehension.

When they saw us they were hugely surprised. Ribwood was one of the

party.

"Hello," he says roughly; "any more coming after you boys?"

"Don't see them," said the Prodigal breathlessly. "We spied you and

cottoned on to what was up, so we made a fierce hike to get in on it.

Gee, I'm all tuckered out."

"All right, get in line. I guess there's lots for us all. You're in on a

good thing, all right. Come along."

So off we started again. The leader was going like one possessed. We

blundered on behind. We were on the other side of the divide looking

into another vast valley. What a magnificent country it was! What a

great manoeuvring-ground it would make for an army! What splendid

open spaces, and round smooth hills, and dimly blue valleys, and silvery

winding creeks! It was veritably a park of the Gods, and enclosing it

was the monstrous, corrugated palisade of the Rockies.

But there was small time to look around. On we went in the same mad,

heart-breaking hurry, mile after mile, hour after hour.

"This is going to be a banner creek, boys," the whisper ran down the

line. "We're in luck. We'll all be Klondike Kings yet."

Cheering, wasn't it? So on we went, hotter than ever, content to follow

the man of iron who was guiding us to the virgin treasure.

We had been pounding along all night, up hill and down dale. The sun

rose, the dawn blossomed, the dew dried on the blueberry; it was

morning. Still we kept up our fierce gait. Would our leader never come

to his destination? By what roundabout route was he guiding us? The sun

climbed up in the blue sky, the heat quivered; it was noon. We panted as

we pelted on, parched and weary, faint and footsore. The excitement of

the stampede had sustained us, and we scarcely had noted the flight of

time. We had been walking for fourteen hours, yet not a man faltered. I

was ready to drop with fatigue; my feet were a mass of blisters, and

every step was intolerable pain to me. But still our leader kept on.

"I guess we'll fool those trying to follow us," snapped Ribwood grimly.

Suddenly the Prodigal said to me: "Say, you boys will have to go on

without me. I'm all in. Go ahead, I'll follow after I'm rested up."

He dropped in a limp heap on the ground and instantly fell asleep.

Several of the others had dropped out too. They fell asleep where they

gave up, utterly exhausted. We had now been going sixteen hours, and

still our leader kept on.

"You're pretty tough for a youngster," growled one of them to me. "Keep

it up, we're almost there."

So I hobbled along painfully, though the desire to throw myself down was

becoming imperative. Just ahead was Jim, sturdily holding his own. The

others were reduced to a bare half-dozen.

It was about four in the afternoon when we reached the creek. Up it our

leader plunged, till he came to a place where a rude shaft had been dug.

We gathered around him. He was a typical prospector, a child of hope,

lean, swarthy, clear-eyed.

"Here it is, boys," he said. "Here's my discovery stake. Now you fellows

go up or down, anywhere you've a notion to, and put in your stakes. You

all know what a lottery it is. Maybe you'll stake a million-dollar

claim, maybe a blank. Mining's all a gamble. But go ahead, boys. I wish

you luck."

So we strung out, and, coming in rotation, Jim and I staked seven and

eight below discovery.

"Seven's a lucky number for me," said Jim; "I've a notion this claim's a

good one."

"I don't care," I said, "for all the gold in the world. What I want is

sleep, sleep, rest and sleep."

So I threw myself down on a bit of moss, and, covering my head with my

coat to ward off the mosquitoes, in a few minutes I was dead to the

world.